No, you can’t TiVo that show!
TiVo is doing everything it can to keep its company name from going where Google has gone before; to becoming a verb. Apparently, TiVo is fighting to keep phrases like ‘I TiVoed my favorite show’ from common use.
As part of the campaign against incorrect usage, TiVo is sending letters to media outlets who use the term incorrectly. They do not want it to be a verb, as in ‘I TiVoed the Simpsons’; or a noun, as in ‘I want two TiVoes’. It has to be a singular, proper adjective.
Honestly, I think they would be flattered. I understand the concern of becoming ‘Xerox’ or ‘Kleenex’, but it seems that this would be a good situation. How many people know Canon makes copy machines? You think of a copy machine, you think Xerox.
Source: CNet: News.com - Noun? Verb? TiVo says it’s neither
The issue isn’t with them taking personal issue with the misuse. It’s their enforcement of trademark law - their trademark is for a product, not a service and as such the misuse is incongruent with the intended use of their mark. Part of a company’s responsibility when maintaining a trademark is to enforce the use of it. Failure to enforce a mark results in loss of enforceability of that mark.
Essentially, if they turn a blind eye to improper use of the mark and a couple of years down the road someone making another brand of digital recorder marketed it using a phrase like “Next time you TiVo, Tivo with a Panasonic!” they may have lost their right to tell them not to.